How Often Do Men Need to Be Intimate With Their Partners?

The best-selling author of research-based books about men, women, and relationships, Shaunti Feldhahn, is a Harvard-trained social researcher and popular speaker who has regularly featured findings in media as diverse as The Today Show, Focus on the Family, and the New York Times.

Shaunti was asked a question about how often do guys need to have sex. The person who asked this question also said that she doesn’t think about sex much, it just was not a need for her, but her husband said that he thought about it all the time, and he gets crabby when she is often tired. Even though she can go without sex weeks or months and not miss it, she tries to do the right thing because her husband can’t go without sex for that long. But when he says that he is deprived and she agrees to it, he gets mad and tells her that he wants her to enjoy it as much as he does. But if only she knew how often a man needs sex, she could plan on that.

The answer to this question started without another question from Shaunti. She asked the woman how she would feel if she told her husband that she needs to hear him say “I love you”. How often does she need to hear it, is it once a week?

Shaunti’s guess is that the woman would probably be really hurt and thinking that her husband supposedly loves her, but he has to force himself to dredge up the willpower to show her love, and she would be thinking that he doesn’t love her like he says he does.

The thing by which she would be hurt would be of what it implied, not because he didn’t say those three words enough times. Maybe he doesn’t care about her or it means that she is not all that lovable.

Shaunti says that sex works the exact same way for most men. What’s important is that what sex signals to them. A sexual action may signal: I desire you; You are desirable; I want to be with you in that way; You make me feel amazing; I want to show you how much I care about you and many other things.

Sex for us, women, is just primarily a physical need for a man, but it is not. One of the deepest emotional needs of the man is to feel that his wife desires him and if he sees that, it gives him a sense of well-being in all the other areas of his life. But if his wife shows that she just doesn’t care that much about sex, then it is clear to him that she does not desire him, and he is no good at trying to make her feel amazing, so he must be completely undesirable and she doesn’t care about him the way she says she does.

In a research with men and women, most women had a different type of desire than men. Women need to be approached differently because most women don’t think about sex as often as men do.

But let’s have a look at that “I love you” parallel. It was clear that men love their wives, but do not think about saying words of love as women might want. But we still expect that men may develop new habits of showing love and expect them to learn how to do that and do it enthusiastically because to us it is so emotionally important.

This same thing can be said of sex too. Sometimes there can be physical or emotional things that get in the way and if that is the case, you need to seek out professional help, but many women don’t realize how important it is to develop new habits of showing our husbands love in this way. We don’t realize how important it is that we learn how to do it, and to do it enthusiastically because to our men it is so emotionally important.

Some women who don’t think about sex have one great solution: they schedule sex dates. One woman that was interviewed said that no matter what was going on in their lives, and no matter what other times they have sex, she and her husband always made time for intimacy on Saturday nights. She loved that time together, and so did her husband.

The average appears to be a few times a week, but there is no one “right amount” of sex that men need, but what they need is their emotional need to feel that you desire them. You need to find a way to show them that, and you’ll see more love coming from them to you!